Safari Trumps – Rules

Shuffle the cards well and deal out all the cards so that each player has as equal a number of cards as possible. Each player holds their cards in a pile face up. Each player only looks at the top card for each turn and is not allowed to change their order.

The shortest player starts by reading out the name of the animal on the top card of their pile then picking a data item to challenge the other players with. For example if the top card in Jim’s pile is a Lion he might say “a Lion, it weights 180kg.” The other players then read out their top cards so Anne might say “a Fish Eagle, it weights 3kg” and Toby might say “a Sable Antelope, it weights 230Kg.” The player with the best or highest value (in this case Toby) wins and collects all the top cards played and places them with his own at the bottom of his pile. It is then the winners turn next (in this case Toby).

If two or more cards share the highest value, then all the top cards are placed in the middle and the original player plays again from their next card. The winner of that round collects all the cards in the middle as well as the ones from the new round.

The game ends when one player has collected all the cards and they are the winner.

The game can take a long time with the Classic pack so you might want to play with fewer cards each. In this case shuffle the pack well and deal out 10 cards each then play as normal.

In describing “Size” we have picked the most relevant measure (length or height) depending on the type of animal. If we had simply said height, then a Crocodile would have been described as being smaller than an Owl.